Ritual works and practices: a case study from a Muslim community in Cambodia

Rituals are formalized, repetitive, and conservative events that assert transcendental power over everyday life. This paper argues that ritual studies should examine how rituals negotiate power and influence. Research on a spirit possession cult among the Muslim Cham in Cambodia shows that the cult functions both as a kind of state ritual and as exorcism, with open-ended and unbounded features in contemporary society. Through the cult, the Cham take refuge in memories of the distant past rather than in immediate memories of terror and political violence from the civil war and Khmer Rouge regime. Songs of the spirits intermingle present and past, narrating difficulties, conflicts, and struggles in a spirit world that mingles with ordinary human life.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The function of the ritual is to assert a transcendental power over everyday experience and rituals therefore tend to be formalized, repetitive and conservative events. The purpose of this paper is to show the importance for ritual studies of ritualised strategies for the negotiation of power and influence. Here, research on a spirit possession cult among the Muslim Cham in Cambodia will serve as an empirical basis for a discussion of the open-ended and unbounded features of ritual in contemporary society, since the performances of this cult may be seen both as a kind of "state ritual" and as exorcism. Through the cult, the Cham tend to take refuge in their memories of the distant past rather than in their more immediate memories of terror and political violence, during the civil war and the Khmer Rouge regime. Rephrased as songs of the spirits, the present and the past intermingle in narrating the difficulties, the conflicts and the struggle in the world of the spirits who live next to, and mingle in, the world of ordinary human beings.